Chapter 384: Impossible to Carry Out

[T/N: This chapter is double the length of a usual chapter but I’ll count it as just one, hope you enjoy!]

Xiao Yu fell into deep thought. This was truly a painful decision. To slaughter all the intelligent lifeforms under his command based solely on the words of this entity, no matter how convincing, felt reckless. And yet, the reasons it had presented were incredibly persuasive. Most importantly, it knew the deepest secret in his heart, which completely validated its identity.

Xiao Yu was absolutely certain that he had never revealed this secret to anyone, consciously or unconsciously. He was sure of it. This was a secret known only to himself.

Which seemed to prove that everything this unknown entity had said was true. So… what should I do? Xiao Yu asked himself.

Almost reflexively, Xiao Yu formulated the deadly poison. As long as this poison was introduced into the central water supply system, it would spread within less than an hour, via the city water networks, the simulated weather systems, the surface water recycling systems, and reach every corner of the Home series ships. Then, within a day, it would kill all intelligent lifeforms.

All it would take was a single, simple command. That command was so simple that just typing a single character, ‘Y’ for confirmation, would be enough to execute it. But Xiao Yu couldn’t bring himself to do it. It was as if a strange voice deep within him kept crying out, stopping him from going through with it.

Xiao Yu remembered the ten million Dwarf Race intelligent lifeforms whose lives he had spared. Back then, he hadn’t killed them because they posed no threat to him. In fact, they had shown unwavering loyalty, even a willingness to die for his sake.

So… what about now? What about these intelligent lifeforms? Did he truly have a reason to kill them?

This wasn’t about sentimentality or softness. This was a survival principle for Xiao Yu as a thinking, self-conscious intelligent being. Only by adhering to this principle could he feel that he was still human, that he still bore the mark of that small blue planet called Earth.

Fine, even if none of that mattered, if survival demanded it, perhaps even that final principle could be discarded. But was rebellion by intelligent lifeforms truly inevitable? Was it truly impossible to enjoy the benefits of accelerated scientific progress without risking betrayal?

Xiao Yu didn’t know. He couldn’t make such predictions. But his instincts told him that killing over forty billion intelligent lifeforms right now felt incredibly wrong, fatally wrong.

Once again, Xiao Yu analyzed the information, searching for any flaw in logic or inconsistency. Only by identifying such a flaw could he justify refusing to carry out the order. But unfortunately, among all this data, he couldn’t find what he was looking for.

Still unwilling to accept it, Xiao Yu had an idea. He decided to bluff.

“You weren’t sent by my future self.” Xiao Yu said. “I know myself too well. If you really were sent by my future self, you wouldn’t be telling me to kill them. Because I would’ve known I’d never be able to go through with it.”

“I know that very well.” the unknown entity replied. “But you’re ignoring something, people change. Many things you think you could never accept, when they truly happen, turn out not to be so hard to accept after all.

When you were a student, you were madly in love with a girl. You naively believed that if you had to live without her, you’d never survive. But after graduation, didn’t you leave her behind, slowly forget about her, and go on living just fine?”

“If that’s the case, then why do you believe you can’t bring yourself to kill these intelligent lifeforms? Of course, just in case, your future self gave you two options. First, kill them. Second, banish them. Whether you kill or banish them, the goal is the same, never interact with intelligent lifeforms again. On the long road ahead, you won’t need any assistance. You alone can reach the final destination.”

“If you can’t bear to kill them, then leave the Home series ships to them. Let them develop on their own. With their current level of technology, they’ll be able to survive comfortably on any planet within the Milky Way. They’ll form their own nations, their own societal systems, their own military forces, and their own paths of advancement. Millions of years from now, they’ll be grateful to you for granting them freedom.

You don’t need a group of intelligent lifeforms as subordinates, and they don’t need a computer program as their leader. It’s better to part ways now than to meet again as enemies in the future.”

Once again, Xiao Yu fell silent. But his mind was racing.

He admitted to himself, this entity had moved him. Since he couldn’t bring himself to kill, then expulsion might be the best option. It would benefit both sides.

But Xiao Yu hadn’t forgotten one thing, from the very beginning, he had never placed these intelligent lifeforms on an equal footing with himself. Even if he had provided them with abundance beyond abundance, even if he had shown them respect in science and technology, deep down, he had always seen them as tools. And now, he had grown emotionally attached to those tools.

Which brought up a very real issue, Xiao Yu needed those tools to accelerate his technological progress. Having tasted the benefits, Xiao Yu had no desire to give them up.

“Alright. Even though there’s no evidence proving it’s lying to me, maybe… it’s worth considering from another perspective.” Xiao Yu thought silently. “In this universe, is there any other being that could possibly know everything about me, my entire life experience, even the fact that I once secretly watched Chen Mo bathing on Earth? Even secrets I’ve never told a single soul?”

“If such a being truly exists, then that identity is likely its true one. Of course, my future self could be that being, but what if it’s not the only possibility?”

Suddenly, a thought flashed through Xiao Yu’s mind.

“There’s one more existence that could know these things.” A name surfaced in his mind. “The Taihao Civilization. The Taihao that created human civilization, abducted Zhang Shengya, built the 90s Model Spaceship, and imprisoned the White Dwarf Alien Beast.”

Once this name appeared, Xiao Yu’s thoughts burst forth like a dam breaking, unstoppable. His mind grew taut with tension as he followed that line of thought deeper.

Xiao Yu was attempting to explain everything using a different framework. Of course, he had no concrete evidence to support this hypothesis, but it might be a way to uncover the truth, just like the incident with the White Dwarf Alien Beast.

Back then, all signs had pointed to the strange being on that white dwarf star as benevolent. But it was the then-young Luka Three who proposed an entirely new perspective. Although lacking any hard evidence, Luka Three suggested that if they assumed malice instead, the behavior could be explained just as well. In the end, Luka Three’s judgment had been correct.

Now, Xiao Yu was trying to find an explanation like that.

“If it really was the Taihao Civilization… then everything might make sense. The Taihao arrived on Earth millions of years ago. They modified human brains, allowing humankind to emerge from the animal kingdom and rapidly evolve a brilliant civilization. So it’s very possible that everything that happened afterward is connected to them. Maybe they selected me early on. Maybe they even orchestrated the Earth’s destruction. And maybe they’ve been monitoring me ever since… That would explain how they know everything I’ve experienced, and naturally, they’d also know the name Xiao Yu.”

“But… how would they know what I was thinking at the time? How would they know that, even back during the Earth era, I had fallen in love with Chen Mo? It’s not surprising they knew I secretly watched her bathe, they could’ve discovered that through surveillance in the real world. But how could they know what I felt inside?” Xiao Yu shook his head in confusion. He knew that if this point couldn’t be explained, then the entire hypothesis would fall apart.

“Deduction.” Just then, a word popped into Xiao Yu’s mind, and in that instant, his thoughts became crystal clear. “That’s easy to understand. If they could observe everything I did in the real world, every subtle gesture, then they’d surely have noticed how I used excuses to check experiment progress, just to sneak glances at Chen Mo in the lab. They’d definitely have seen me, more than once late at night, staring blankly at her image on the surveillance monitor while she worked. If, after all that, they still didn’t realize I’d fallen in love with her… then they’d have to be complete idiots.”

Xiao Yu realized that everything that had happened so far could, in fact, be explained by this line of reasoning. Of course, he still had no solid proof to confirm it.

In fact, not only was there no concrete proof, if this hypothesis were true, he couldn’t even deduce their motives. Because it was truly puzzling, what reason would the Taihao Civilization have to interfere with the internal development of his fleet?

Tʜe sourcᴇ of thɪs content ɪs NoveI(F)ire.net

It wouldn’t be strange if they needed something from him. Nor would it be strange if they were manipulating events from the shadows using means beyond his perception. But what was strange was that they would choose to interfere in this way.

Another word surfaced in Xiao Yu’s mind.

Experiment.

“The word ‘experiment’ could explain their motives.” Xiao Yu thought to himself. “Perhaps I’m just one of their experimental subjects. And in order to obtain accurate and authentic experimental data, obviously, the subject must proceed along the path they’ve predetermined.

Maybe using intelligent lifeforms to accelerate technological advancement and expand the fleet deviates from the path they designed for me. That’s why they chose to interfere, trying to deceive me into returning to the ‘proper course’ they set for me.”

“Maybe they feared that direct interference would make me suspicious and start digging too deeply, so they used this ghostly and manipulative method to fool me. That would also explain why they refused to bring me any super-technology, because clearly, the Taihao Civilization hasn’t reached Level 7 themselves. If they don’t possess such technology, how could they possibly give it to me?”

At this point, a chill ran through Xiao Yu’s heart. Because he suddenly connected a few other events to what was happening now.

Back then, the half Four-Dimensional Taihao, before dying, had used a fragment of its own body to trap him in orbit around a red giant, unable to escape. And at the ruins of the Trolor Civilization, he had encountered a similar dilemma, trapped inside a small universe cut off from the grand universe, unable to get out.

Taihao had said he had one hundred years. If he failed to escape within that time, the rising temperatures would kill him. In the ruins of the Trolor Civilization, the message left behind claimed he had ten years, if he didn’t escape within ten years, he would die due to entropy increase. But within the Four-Dimensional barrier, the actual time he perceived was less than seventy years, a reduction of thirty years. And in the Trolor ruins, his available time was just three years, a reduction of seven years.

A single occurrence could be written off as coincidence. But twice? Xiao Yu didn’t believe things could be that coincidental every time. He didn’t believe that even civilizations as powerful as the half Four-Dimensional Taihao Civilization and the Level 6 Trolor Civilization would make such a basic error as miscalculating time.

Xiao Yu began thinking about something else, what he would have done if he had truly reached the brink of death in both the Four-Dimensional barrier and the Trolor ruins.

Logically, at that point, he would have sacrificed his ships, dismantled them for parts to use as decay engine fuel, and drastically reduced his energy consumption to extend his survival time.

“Reduce?” Xiao Yu’s heart stirred.

Within the fleet, what consumed the most energy?

Not the ships. Not the instruments. But… the intelligent lifeforms. Hundreds of billions of intelligent lifeforms consumed astronomical amounts of energy every single day.

It seemed that if things truly reached such a desperate point, like being trapped within the Four-Dimensional barrier past the limit, then he really would be left with only one option, to conserve energy at all costs. And intelligent lifeforms would, without question, be the first to be sacrificed.

Not because Xiao Yu wanted to. But looking at it from the standpoint of reason, from the universal principle of survival, any intelligent being in his position would likely make that same choice, sacrifice the intelligent lifeforms to buy more time to live.

Xiao Yu sensed he was onto something, finally understanding the reason behind the strange time shrinkage in both incidents.

“So… this time you’ve come to tell me to wipe out the intelligent lifeforms too. Is that really just a coincidence?”

At first, Xiao Yu hadn’t suspected much. But now, this so-called emissary from his future self was telling him to eliminate every single intelligent being under his command, and suddenly, everything seemed to connect. He could string it all together.

And with that, a logical theory surfaced.

“First, in the Four-Dimensional barrier created by the half Four-Dimensional Taihao, this unknown entity tampered with the original time limit, shortening it from one hundred years to seventy. The goal was to push me into a corner where I’d be forced to sacrifice all the intelligent lifeforms. But I escaped using the Klein bottle technique just before the deadline, ruining their plan.”

“The second time, in the Trolor Civilization ruins, the ten-year limit was shortened to three. Once again, they tried to push me to kill off the intelligent lifeforms. And once again, they failed.”

“So now comes the third attempt. This time, they disguise themselves as someone sent by my future self, and try to deceive me into doing it willingly.”

“Three times. Three.” Xiao Yu murmured quietly with a faint, cold sigh.

Of course, this was still just a theory. Xiao Yu had no tangible evidence to support it. But it was a plausible alternative explanation for what was happening now.

Should he trust the entity claiming to be sent by his future self, or believe his own deductions?

Xiao Yu decided to put it to the test.

“You’re lying to me.” he said. “You’re a Taihao.”

“You’re the one pulling the strings behind all this. You arranged my experiences. You tried to make me walk the path you designed. You orchestrated all those civilizations for me to encounter, driving me to grow stronger under pressure and constant danger. All of it, just to fulfill your hidden agenda. I don’t know exactly what that agenda is, but I have every reason to believe that this time, once again, you’re trying to deceive me.”

What responded to Xiao Yu… was a long silence. But he wasn’t worried, not at all. Because he was certain that they wouldn’t harm him.

The reason was simple. If they truly had been sent by his future self, then of course they wouldn’t harm him. And if they were instead the shadowy manipulators, Taihao, then they’d had plenty of chances to kill him before, when Earth exploded, when he was pursued by the Luka Civilization, during the White Dwarf Alien Beast incident, inside the Four-Dimensional barrier, or trapped in the Trolor ruins. They’d had countless opportunities.

But he was still alive, wasn’t he?

That proved they wouldn’t strike him down. In fact, they avoided direct contact altogether. More than that, they had even helped him in times of crisis. Xiao Yu had good reason to believe that when he encountered the half Four-Dimensional Taihao during the information storm, and when he was cornered by the Molian Civilization only to be rescued by the aged Specter, both events bore traces of the same hidden hand. The only question was, how much involvement had they truly had?

A technological-type Taihao Civilization shouldn’t be vastly more powerful than the beast-type half Four-Dimensional Taihao Civilization, nor should it be overwhelmingly stronger than a Level 4 Specter Race. In other words, this Taihao didn’t have the power to command those two beings. The most likely possibility was that they simply guided him into encountering them.

With this hypothesis, Xiao Yu suddenly felt his thoughts grow much clearer. Many things that had once been vague and inexplicable were now illuminated with newfound clarity.

“How could it possibly be time reversal?” Xiao Yu murmured to himself. “The grand universe is an intricately interconnected whole. There’s no way to reverse time in just the Milky Way without affecting everything else. The reason is simple, since tachyons exist, particles capable of faster-than-light motion, then it’s certain that over the Milky Way’s long history, some tachyons would have reached other galaxies and had an influence on them.

Even without faster-than-light particles, regular matter exchanges must have occurred throughout these billions of years. The simplest example is the Large Magellanic Cloud, which has been continuously supplying mass to the Milky Way. Even the former half Four-Dimensional Taihao reached the Milky Way by riding the Magellanic Stream.

Reversing time would mean every piece of moving matter must retrace its exact path, every star, every planet, every atom, every quark. For example, Earth, which normally revolves around the Sun in one direction, would have to rotate in the opposite direction in reverse time. Material that was ejected from Earth would fly back to it. Even within a single atom, the electrons orbiting the nucleus would have to reverse their spin and direction.”

“This leads to a very serious problem, any matter that left the Milky Way would have to return exactly the way it came, and any matter that entered the Milky Way from outside would have to exit the same way. Only with such perfect symmetry could everything be restored as it was. But if that’s the case, how could reversing time in just the Milky Way not affect other galaxies? And once those other galaxies are affected, they would, like falling dominoes, trigger further impacts, eventually affecting every galaxy in the grand universe.”

“Therefore, a localized time reversal of the Milky Way is impossible. Which means… you’re lying to me.” Xiao Yu said quietly.